THE Fijian Elections Office (FEO) has trained 11,092 applicants as election officials and 3708 as presiding and assistant presiding officers as of Monday this week.

This was revealed by FEO director corporate services Sanjeshwar Ram while signing the contracts of the first batch of 14 election officials for two polling stations at the FEO office in Suva yesterday.

Mr Ram said the recruitment drive began in August last year Fiji wide in two phases.

"The recruitment was conducted through a computer-based test. In order to deliver the 2018 General Election successfully, the FEO needs around 12,000 election officials," Mr Ram said.

He said at the conclusion of the recruitment drive, the FEO had received 17,016 applicants.

"The positions available for the elections include presiding officers (PO), assistant presiding officers(APO), polling day workers and venue queue controllers," he said.

However, he said there had been issues faced during this process with over 1400 officials who had attended the PO and APO training's had not be paid their $75 allowances because of lack of information supplied.

"We still have over 500 elections officials who have not been paid their $45 training allowance because of incorrect bank details and unavailability of tax identification numbers (TIN)," he said.

He said over 800 officials who were eligible for training could not be contacted.

He said FEO had now successfully allocated 1312 polling stations around the country.

"We are now in the process of printing contracts and distributing them to the respective divisional offices for signing by the applicants," he said.